GigaOM’s Top 15 Mobile Influencers

Sanjay Jha, co-CEO Motorola

Influence: Sanjay Jha left Qualcomm last year to take on the Herculean task of bringing Motorola’s handset division back from the brink. His answer to Motorola’s lagging handset sales has been to focus on fewer mobile operating systems — in particular, Google’s Android platform. Jha and Motorola have the support of major carriers in the U.S. and could very well bring the mobile Internet on handsets to the millions who don’t have an iPhone. As the former chief operating officer at Qualcomm, Jha helped oversee the creation of its Snapdragon chipset, which powers what that company calls smartbooks and the rest of us call netbooks. Jha has not only foreseen the effect that ubiquitous mobile broadband will have on our devices, but has actually helped make those devices a reality.